The invention relates to the field of computer programs and systems, and more specifically to computer-aided design (CAD) systems and methods.
Computer-aided techniques are known to include Computer-Aided Design or CAD, which relates to software solutions for authoring product design. Similarly, CAE is an acronym for Computer-Aided Engineering, e.g. it relates to software solutions for simulating the physical behavior of a future product. CAM stands for Computer-Aided Manufacturing and typically includes software solutions for defining manufacturing processes and operations.
A number of systems and programs are offered on the market for the design of objects (or parts) or assemblies of objects, forming a product, such as the one provided by Dassault Systemes under the trademark CATIA. These CAD systems allow a user to construct and manipulate complex three dimensional (3D) models of objects or assemblies of objects. CAD systems thus provide a representation of modeled objects using edges or lines, in certain cases with faces. Lines or edges may be represented in various manners, e.g. non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS). These CAD systems manage parts or assemblies of parts as modeled objects, which are mostly specifications of geometry. Specifically, CAD files contain specifications, from which geometry is generated, which in turn allow for a representation to be generated. Geometry and representation may be stored in a single CAD file or multiple ones. CAD systems include graphic tools for representing the modeled objects to the designers; these tools are dedicated to the display of complex objects—the typical size of a file representing an object in a CAD system being in the range of one Megabyte per part, and an assembly may comprise thousands of parts. A CAD system manages models of objects, which are stored in electronic files.
In computer-aided techniques, the graphical user interface (GUI) plays an important role as regards the efficiency of the technique. Most of the operations required for manipulating and/or navigating the modeled objects may be performed by the user (e.g. the designers) on the GUI. Especially, the user may create, modify, and delete the modeled objects forming the product, and also explore the product so as to comprehend how modeled objects are interrelated, e.g. via a product structure. Traditionally, these operations are carried out through dedicated menus and icons which are located on the sides of the GUI.
Also known are Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, which refer to a business strategy that helps companies to share product data, apply common processes, and leverage corporate knowledge for the development of products from conception to the end of their life, across the concept of extended enterprise. By including the actors (company departments, business partners, suppliers, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM), and customers), PLM may allow this network to operate as a single entity to conceptualize, design, build, and support products and processes.
Some PLM solutions make it for instance possible to design and develop products by creating digital mockups (a 3D graphical model of a product). The digital product may be first defined and simulated using an appropriate application. Then, the lean digital manufacturing processes may be defined and modeled.
The PLM solutions provided by Dassault Systemes (under the trademarks CATIA, ENOVIA and DELMIA) provides an Engineering Hub, which organizes product engineering knowledge, a Manufacturing Hub, which manages manufacturing engineering knowledge, and an Enterprise Hub which enables enterprise integrations and connections into both the Engineering and Manufacturing Hubs. All together the system delivers an open object model linking products, processes, resources to enable dynamic, knowledge-based product creation and decision support that drives optimized product definition, manufacturing preparation, production and service.
Such PLM solutions comprise a relational database of products. The database comprises a set of textual data and relations between the data. Data typically include technical data related to the products said data being ordered in a hierarchy of data and are indexed to be searchable. The data are representative of the modeled objects, which are often modeled products and processes.
Product lifecycle information, including product configuration, process knowledge and resources information are typically intended to be edited in a collaborative way.
In almost all PLM systems, the structure of a product can be managed through Copy/Cut Paste or Insert/Remove operations. This means that a user has to look at a two-dimensional (2D) display, such as a list, a Bill of Materials, or a specification tree to perform his structure operations. Such a prior art system is represented in FIG. 1. With reference to FIG. 1, a user is designing a product 200. Suppose that the user wants to copy object 210, with the purpose, for example, of duplicating it by pasting it elsewhere in the structure product 200. In order to do so, the user needs to open and browse specification tree 250 and select the text reference 220 of object 210. The user may then open a box 230 with a list of action buttons (typically through acting on reference 220 with a haptic device such as a mouse), and select the copy action 240.
Such a method for editing a product is complex because it requires many actions from the user. Furthermore, in these existing solutions, the user has to understand the links between a 2D representation, displayed most of the time as a tree of text references, and 3D representations. If the user needs to modify the structure of a product, he has to use capabilities such as Copy/Cut Paste or Insert/Remove to move a sub-product from one structure node into another one.
These operations are performed most of the time in the 2D view/Specification tree, or sometimes using for the Copy/Cut operation a “select instance only” mode which allows the user to select a leaf instance by its 3D representations. But the paste operation has to be performed on the 2D view which is the only one to show Product/Assembly node.
Accordingly, the art of computer-aided design would benefit from the provision of a computer-implemented method for editing a product which is less complex.